IMSA and Le Mans are converging, and everyone still hates Balance of Performance.

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There was beautiful weather and a big crowd on hand for the 2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

Team Penske is one of the best in the entire business of racing. Here, they're servicing the #6 during the race. This car would come in 4th overall.

Jonathan Gitlin

I'm pretty sure I got photos of these two, and their race car hats, last year. Or maybe in 2018.

Jonathan Gitlin

The steering of the Acura ARX-05 is a bit complicated.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

The cockpit of the ARX-05 is not particularly spacious. Drivers need to be able to get out of here in seconds—through the door to their left, not through the door this picture was taken from.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

Give teams enough time, money, and an autoclave, and they'll make just about anything out of carbon fiber. In the background, one of Team Penske's drivers, Ricky Taylor.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

You're only allowed four mechanics over the pit wall during a stop.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

AJ Allmendinger has raced in a ton of categories. At this year's Rolex 24, he was racing for Heinricher Racing with Meyer Shank Racing in the #57 Acura NSX GT3. He also has a cat called Mr. Tickles, who was at the track with him. That makes him cooler than most drivers in my book.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

Rubbing is racing.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

The Rolex 24 was the debut for Corvette Racing's new C8.R. I still don't love the way it looks, and a lot of people complained that they couldn't hear the engine over the sound of the Porsches.

Jonathan Gitlin

The #3 Corvette would have a pretty good race, finishing 4th in class. They #4 car continues to have bad luck and needed to have the engine removed to cure an oil leak mid-race.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

Jon Ikeda, brand manager for Acura (center left) and Mike Shank, boss of Meyer Shank Racing (center right) show us around the garage on Friday

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

The Acura NSX GT3's steering wheel. The drivers have to know what all these buttons and dials do without looking at the labels.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

There are many different jobs in the pit lane.

Jonathan Gitlin

Mazda has lost none of its speed in the off-season.

Jonathan Gitlin

You can barely see the RT24-P's engine in the chassis.

Jonathan Gitlin

A mechanic applies tear-off tape to the headlights of the #31 Cadillac.

Jonathan Gitlin

You see some cool stuff in the fanzone. Like this Hudson Hornet!

Jonathan Gitlin

Or this Porsche 962.

Jonathan Gitlin

This split-livery 911 GT1 was pretty interesting.

Jonathan Gitlin

Acura flew me to Columbus, Ohio, then asked me to drive an NSX down to Daytona over two and a half days, then flew me back to Washington DC. The company also provided hotels along the way and in Daytona for this story. You can read about that NSX drive in an article coming soon.

Further Reading

What a difference a year makes. In 2019, the Rolex 24 at Daytona could have more accurately been called the Rolex 14 because it rained so hard and for so long that there were 10 hours of red flag stoppages and safety car periods. The sports car community had a markedly better time of it in 2020—the last raindrops fell sometime on Thursday, well before the green flag waved at 1:40pm on Saturday, with summer-like temperatures during the day that were welcomed by everyone who descended on Daytona Beach in Florida from places where winter remains in full effect. The racing was quite different from a year ago as well. It was less of a barnstormer, for one thing, with a noticeably smaller grid than in years past, and minus the international star power that is Fernando Alonso—the former F1 double-champ decided to start his racing year by competing in the Dakar rally, instead. That's not to suggest a bad time was had—far from it.

Who wants to race to France?

The biggest news for the weekend actually happened before the race got underway. As mentioned in my pre-race article, talks have been ongoing between IMSA—which runs the WeatherTech Sportscar Championship (of which the Rolex 24 is a part) and the ACO, the French organization that controls the 24 Hours of Le Mans. On Friday, the two groups held a press conference to announce that the next iteration of the DPi prototype race cars—due in 2022—will now be called LMDh (for Le Mans Daytona hybrid) and will compete against the ACO's new Le Mans Hypercar at the world's biggest race. (Sorry Indy, the 500 is still only the world's largest single day sporting event.)

LMDh will use a homologated carbon fiber chassis from the same four manufacturers that produce the current DPi carbon fiber tubs. OEMs will still be free to use their own engines and electronics, and the cars will have much more road car-like styling, similar to Le Mans Hypercars. There will be a common hybrid system that recovers and deploys kinetic energy at the rear wheels, although beyond that, the technical details remain a work in progress. The upshot of this news is that the factory-supported prototypes fielded by the likes of Cadillac, Acura, and Mazda will be eligible to compete at Le Mans for an overall win, something that many sports car fans have been wanting to see since the dieselgate-powered implosion of the mighty LMP1-H category.

As for the OEMs, they're happy but cautious. "It's great that it's happening. There are more challenges, more interesting dynamics," said Jon Ikeda, Acura Division's general manager. "We've got to look at it from a company perspective and see what it all means—you know, we're a North American brand, but at the same time it's a global stage. And it's interesting to see how our company feels toward it. It's exciting," Ikeda told me.

Nelson Cosgrove, director of Mazda Motorsports, had a similar take. "It's super exciting for sports car racing and gives the sport a wonderful runway going into the next ten years to race globally. It has been a very long time since someone could take a prototype and run both here and at Le Mans, and the level of interest in this announcement from the industry is really incredible. For us, we will have to wait to see exactly what the rules are and how all that plays out, but certainly we'll take a strong look once we know... And now, since we have a definite close-out to the DPi 1.0 era, we have to try to close that out with winning some of these big races and fighting for the championship," he told Ars.

Further Reading

"Since the introduction of the Cadillac DPi-V.R in 2017, we have had tremendous success in North America in the IMSA Series and are encouraged at the prospect of an international formula for the future of prototype racing. Once we obtain further details, we will evaluate if our participation aligns with our company’s future vision," said Cadillac Racing Director Mark Kent in a statement sent to Ars.

Beyond the problem of North American brands not really having a compelling marketing mandate to race in France (other than Corvette, but that's different), there are still a few significant details that need to be worked out in the next two years. The ACO Hypercar spec calls for race cars with around 800hp (600kW), whereas the current DPi prototypes are at or below 600hp (447kW), depending upon the current balance of performance. If IMSA does indeed go for an off-the-shelf hybrid system like the one being adopted by the British Touring Car Championship, the teams are still going to need to turn up their engines by another 150hp (112kW) or so, and I'm not sure that any of the three current OEMs have that kind of margin with their current engines, particularly if the idea is to be able to race for 24 hours.

Not being conversant with the constantly changing names of sponsored racing events, and being more familiar with the previous paradigm of naming such events after locations, rather than companies, I was puzzled by this headline.

I'd never heard of the "Rolex 24". I thought it was some elitist watch event, because there is a Rolex Daytona that only has a relation to racing from the name, not the equipment itself.

So, has this particular event been going on for very long? And is it a race, a rally, a convention or sort of all of them? I'm thinking a sort of rally/convention from the article, but it's the first I've heard of it. I have heard of a number of Daytona rallies in the past, though. So did Rolex buy up one of them? Or is this a new car event?

<wanders off to google>

Oh. I have heard of it, but as the 24 Hours of Daytona. I must have missed it when Rolex took it over.

Okay, issues solved. But man, that headline was a head scratcher for a while, even after reading the article (which was pretty deeply auto-geek considering my Model T level of understanding).

Not being conversant with the constantly changing names of sponsored racing events, and being more familiar with the previous paradigm of naming such events after locations, rather than companies, I was puzzled by this headline.

I'd never heard of the "Rolex 24". I thought it was some elitist watch event, because there is a Rolex Daytona that only has a relation to racing from the name, not the equipment itself.

So, has this particular event been going on for very long? And is it a race, a rally, a convention or sort of all of them? I'm thinking a sort of rally/convention from the article, but it's the first I've heard of it. I have heard of a number of Daytona rallies in the past, though. So did Rolex buy up one of them? Or is this a new car event?

<wanders off to google>

Oh. I have heard of it, but as the 24 Hours of Daytona. I must have missed it when Rolex took it over.

Okay, issues solved. But man, that headline was a head scratcher for a while, even after reading the article (which was pretty deeply auto-geek considering my Model T level of understanding).

I absolutely hate how companies put their names in events and landmarks. We are debasing them just to make a few dollars. That headline is just stupid. I don’t follow races much; I know what Daytona is, but I have no clue about WTH “Rolex 24” might be. The blurb is not very helpful. It’s a shame, because the article is actually interesting.

Not being conversant with the constantly changing names of sponsored racing events, and being more familiar with the previous paradigm of naming such events after locations, rather than companies, I was puzzled by this headline.

I'd never heard of the "Rolex 24". I thought it was some elitist watch event, because there is a Rolex Daytona that only has a relation to racing from the name, not the equipment itself.

So, has this particular event been going on for very long? And is it a race, a rally, a convention or sort of all of them? I'm thinking a sort of rally/convention from the article, but it's the first I've heard of it. I have heard of a number of Daytona rallies in the past, though. So did Rolex buy up one of them? Or is this a new car event?

<wanders off to google>

Oh. I have heard of it, but as the 24 Hours of Daytona. I must have missed it when Rolex took it over.

Okay, issues solved. But man, that headline was a head scratcher for a while, even after reading the article (which was pretty deeply auto-geek considering my Model T level of understanding).

I'll tweak the headline. But for the record, Rolex has been the title sponsor of this race since 1991.

I'd never heard of the "Rolex 24". I thought it was some elitist watch event, because there is a Rolex Daytonathat only has a relation to racing from the name, not the equipment itself.

Huh?

Quote:

The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona is a mechanical chronograph wristwatch designed to meet the needs of racing drivers by measuring elapsed time and calculating average speed. Its name refers to Daytona, Florida, where racing flourished in the early 20th century.

I think it is great for sports cars racing the ACO came to its senses here. No manufacturer wants a spending war in sports car prototype racing. Unified top class is the ONLY answer. Of course the second question is hybrid? It seems no manufacturer wants hybrids. Its all-electric or nothing and since EV is unrealistic for endurance racing... well...

I'd never heard of the "Rolex 24". I thought it was some elitist watch event, because there is a Rolex Daytonathat only has a relation to racing from the name, not the equipment itself.

Huh?

Quote:

The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona is a mechanical chronograph wristwatch designed to meet the needs of racing drivers by measuring elapsed time and calculating average speed. Its name refers to Daytona, Florida, where racing flourished in the early 20th century.

My wife, a member of Dinger Nation, was rather annoyed that Canadian rights holder Discovery Velocity decided not to show the race and still had IMSA geo-block streaming access. So we only got to watch the start and end on NBC.